Today (Monday 28th April) marks the start of Digital Art Week 2014. Now in its fourth year, this initiative gives primary school children around Ireland the opportunity to share their art with other children around the country and complete some fun visual arts activities. During the course of the week, schools will use digital tools to learn about art and to create their own pieces of work. The project was started in 2011 by teachers Simon Lewis (@simonmlewis), Damien Quinn (@seomraranga) and Fred Boss (@fboss) and it aims to give pupils and teachers the opportunity to use technology in a simple way to learn all about art.
There are four main parts to the initiative. First, students create their own digital art (using any of a number of recommended free applications, or software of their own choosing) and share it via the Digital Art Week website (you can view the gallery of last year’s work by clicking here). Next, they engage in a Twitter art treasure hunt in which they explore some of the world’s most famous art pieces and learn about them through conversing with other schools. After that, pupils look at and respond to some great pieces of art by following links suggested by Irish teachers on the Digital Art Week website, and also write posts on their class or school blog about this. For the final part of the project, schools are encouraged to visit a local art gallery (if possible) to view pieces of art, or alternatively to invite an artist to visit the class and talk about their work as an artist. Further details are available here.
Visit the project website at http://www.digitalartweek.com/2014/ for more details and to view the gallery of art as it is compiled throughout the week. The Twitter hashtag for the project is #artweek14.